Who remembers Trigg Island Café?

Chris Holyday is the author of Between Beach and Bush book published by Hesperian Press 2020.

Signed copies of ‘Between Beach and Bush‘ book are available at Tropico North Beach.

This is Chris’s history of Trigg Island café.

Who remembers Trigg Island Café?

by Chris Holyday

It might surprise many locals that the history of a restaurant at Trigg only goes back a relatively short time. The First Nations People had set fish traps in the rocky limestone reefs north of Trigg Island from times immemorial. A popular fishing spot from the late 19^th century, a few scattered beach houses, the nun’s retreats and fishing huts were the only evidence of human activity right up to the 1950s before the surf club was built. The fishing huts were owned by such local identities as George Stubberfield and his family, who first took up lots facing the ocean at Trigg in the early 1900s. The whole family lived in their hut there during the Depression years, eking out a living from fishing. Other later fishing hut owners were Fred Floyd, Ron Johnson and Dick Leonard.

When the Trigg Island Surf Life Saving Club came along with its first clubrooms in 1957, their small 4.5 sqm building and storeroom was built overlooking the fishing huts, right next to the boat ramp. The “club” must have looked just like another fishing shack! 

Even from that time, there would be no sign of a restaurant on the landmark site until the 1990s – and the circumstances of that first restaurant coming to life make interesting reading. The birth of that first restaurant has been documented in the “Trigg Island SLSC – The First 50 Years 1953 – 2003” book.

By the 1990s the second 1960s-built club premises were aging and required major refurbishment or replacement. 

Then the City of Stirling decided to contribute $1.4 million towards the provision of new clubrooms – provided they also included a public restaurant. According to Glenn Buck, that may have been ok, except the restaurant was to be positioned right where their existing clubrooms were located – and the lookout tower overlooking the treacherous blue hole was to be shifted further south and ended up being too far from the blue hole. According to the club’s history, the authorities learnt the hard way, years later, when a new tower had to be built in a more ideal location at a cost of $80,000. In any case, a first-time restaurant and kiosk was operating from 1994. 

I remember it in the early 2000s as the “Trigg Island Café.” See painting courtesy Dez Smith (dezsmith.com).

The second owners, Des De Klerk tells the story of how he, and his wife Shelley, whilst on holidays, visited the new Trigg Beach Café in its early days of operation. He was so impressed with the setting and its unique outlook that he offered to buy the business then and there! The first owner soon contacted Des – they had found the work too onerous to continue the business. That was in 1996/97 and Des and Shelley moved from South Africa to set up their Trigg Island Café, bringing with them a brand-new menu, new flavours and plenty of enthusiasm to the business. Des also brought with him qualifications in hotel management and with his and Shelley’s hard work, the new enterprise soon attracted a dedicated local, and Perth-wide following. It was a win-win for the community as the surf club also benefited from a share of the lease income to help fund their community operations.

Imagine the outcry, when the City of Stirling decided to again renovate the premises in 2012, effectively terminating the De Klerk’s lease. Even a well-supported 5,000 plus signatures petition, signed by many happy customers to maintain the Trigg Island Café, proved unsuccessful and the doors closed. Des and Shelley have since moved south to establish, and successfully run, The Little Fish Restaurant at Yallingup.

A young George Kailis also remembers the Trigg Island Café. As a young Trigg surfer, he would see its prime position from the vantage point of the rolling Trigg swells and dream about one day owning the restaurant. It overlooked arguably Perth’s best surfing beach after all and George was twice over a State Junior Champion at Trigg. The young George was drawing on his ancestry, which stems from his grandfather, George P. Kailis, who founded the Perth seafood business G.P. Kailis & Sons in 1928. And most of the family patriarch’s sons, including young George’s father, Victor, would follow their seafaring ancestors from the Greek Island of Kastellorizo into the seafood business. The V.G. Kailis family purchased the business in July 2012. In 2014/15 they re-opened as a newly renovated “Kailis Beach Café.”

George then identified an opportunity to attract the younger generation, and he convinced his father about the latest concept – Island Market Trigg and Canteen. The building was renovated in 2017, and again re-opened in September 2017. The concept worked and now it has a bright, casual vibe, perfectly complementing its unique, wide ocean-vista views, supported by an innovative Mediterranean menu created by legendary chef David Coomer.

It has become part of the Trigg community, welded to the Trigg Island Surf Life Saving Club site and that club’s history – as well as the De Klerk and Kailis family folklore in Trigg/North Beach. It now ranks as a truly neighbourhood, and much-loved neighbourly venue.

Thanks for sharing your Trigg Island history Chris Holyday.

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